As the amount of information generated and stored in digital form has exploded over the last few years, demand for improved systems to display the information processed by new multimedia digital devices has become more critical. The most efficient way for humans to absorb vast amounts of information quickly is visual. 2-D displays have improved greatly in terms of price and performance over the last few years but in many applications the inherent 4-D nature of most data is shortchanged by the lack of a real third spatial dimension in the display device. The vast majority of 3-D devices require visual aids for the observer or complex mechanical motion in the display, and lack true 360* viewing capability for the audience. Several static, auto-stereoscopic volumetric display devices have been proposed and built over the last few decades but all of them have certain limitations in terms of spatial resolution, temporal resolution, viewing angle, color fidelity, ability to deal with occlusion and opacity, cost, and complexity of construction and operation (see Volumetric Display devices in Wikipedia).
The ability to display 3-D information accurately is becoming increasingly crucial in areas such as defense applications where the battlefield of the future is no longer bound by the 2-D limits of the surface of the earth but the 3-D of space. For example, pilots in (or remotely controlling) sophisticated aircrafts need to quickly assimilate the vast amount of data from advanced electronic monitor and command systems. The need for improved situation awareness encompasses informing the pilot of other aircrafts, ground threats and terrain in his area and their spatial relationship to his aircraft. A 3-D display capable of rapidly updating the data generated by computers and other electronic 3-D monitors would be ideally suited for this purpose. This technology could also provide realistic 3-D imagery of the cockpit's view for more effective laboratory flight simulators. A 3-D display could also support ground based applications including mobile and laboratory flight simulators, rapid cockpit prototyping, pilot-aiding artificial-intelligence knowledgebase development, unmanned aerial vehicles operations, and avionics development workstations.
Commercial demand for 3-D display capability is also expected to increase in the areas of radar and navigational displays, complex outputs from scientific and engineering simulations, medical and biotech imaging, robotic command, control and monitoring, entertainment and artistic applications, and numerous other needs.
We propose a novel 3-D volumetric display system called the video cube which is capable of 0.4-mm or better resolution over a very large format (FIG. 1). The video cube consists of a gas-tight box filled with low pressure gas and a fine, 3-D grid of wires. The wires are energized by an array of medium voltage power sources and controlled by a 64-bit microprocessor with 128 GB of display buffer memory. This system permits true 3-D visualization from all angles and can be rapidly updated to display continuous moving images. The cost of the projected prototype system is high, but continued reduction in semiconductor component and plasma display technology costs should bring the cost of the video cube within reach of the commercial market by 2010.